Challenges

Occasionally on Loving Swats, a discussion will spark a fiction Challenge.  Challenges are friendly writing contests in which list members are 'challenged' to write a story with certain rules and guidelines.  Often those involve including a certain phrase, starting a story with certain words or writing a particular type of story. Luckily for all of us, there are no losers in these contest - only winners: The list gets to enjoy a host of new stories and list members who swear they never write can find themselves inspired and prove why you should never say 'never'. Below are some of the challenges that took place on LS in 2004 and 2005.

Song Lyric Challenge - March 2004: Write a story in which the characters sing, hear, think about or read a song that relates to them.  To encourage new authors, the suggested story length was 1,000 words or less.

Halloween Challenge 2004: Write a story a Halloween story and include somewhere in it, the sentence "Are you sure you want to go through that door?"

Valentine's Challenge 2005: Write a romantic story with a theme of "thunderclaps and whispers"

Fall Challenge 2005: Write a story that symbolizes what the Fall season means to you.

Valentine's Challenge 2006: Write a short story with the words, "I've never been so humilated in my life"

Thanks so much to Lucel and all her help researching and compiling the list of 2004 & 2005 challenges.  LS is a large active list with almost 6,000 messages in that timeframe and it was a huge task. We owe her many thanks for her hard work.  Thanks Lucel! Thanks so much to Clawkit and all her help researching and compiling the list of direct web addresses for all the stories listed.  LS has many active writers and tracking down all the stories scattered among many pages was not an easy task but one that was vital to the archives.  We owe her many thanks for her hard work.  Thanks Clawkit!